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Sunday, 30 August 2015

Placing Okwui Enwezor on the spot of U.S-based scholar’s sympathy for artists in Africa

Yinka Shonibare (U.K), Ndidi Dike and Peju Alatise (Nigeria) as case study.Excerpts from OYASAF Lecture: Beyond the Black Atlantic: Contemporary Artistic Production in Lagos
Today, an event held in Lagos few days ago.

Nelson's Ship in A Bottle by Yinka Shonibare

Johanna Wild is a Ph.D.
Candidate, Department of Art and Art History, University of New Mexico.

Wild: Contemporary African art
was introduced to audiences in Europe and the United States in the course of
the 1990s and early 2000s through a series of so-called “mega” exhibitions. Although many scholars contributed to
the global validation of contemporary African art, Okwui Enwezor, a Nigerian-born U.S.-educated diaspora curator, has
undoubtedly taken on a leading role in this effort. He shaped the field through
his organization of large-scale exhibitions, his directorship of both newly
founded and long-standing biennials, and his co-publication of survey texts
such as Contemporary African Art Since
1980. But Enwezor’s curatorial and scholarly work has not remained
unchallenged. Art historian Sylvester Ogechie observed that Enwezor has lent hyper-visibility to
a relatively small selection of African diaspora artists trained at U.S. and
European art academies and located in “the West”, such as London-based Yinka
Shonibare MBE, while artistic production on the African continent is largely
ignored on these “global” circuits. In this fashion, he argues, Africa is
written out of art history as a relevant site of contemporary artistic
production. He also rejects Enwezor’s discourse of globalization and
deterritorialization, arguing that it fails to acknowledge the persistent
asymmetries of access to the “global” art space, while also ignoring how
artists everywhere domesticate global styles and visual languages.

Johanna Wild

The goals for my fellowship with OYASAF were twofold. On
the one hand, I came to learn about Lagos’ vibrant and growing contemporary art
scene, in an effort to counter the tendencies described by Ogbechie in my own teaching
and scholarship. Although my dissertation research focuses on the work and
reception of Nigerian expatriate artist Yinka Shonibare MBE, my OYASAF
presentation puts his work into conversation with the work of Lagos-based
artists Ndidi Dike and Peju Alatise. Although Ndidi Dike, Peju Alatise, and
Yinka Shonibare MBE have used similar media or addressed related, globally
relevant themes, my presentation also aims to show how they have domesticated
these through the filters of their locales—Lagos and London—to make them
relevant to their specific socio-cultural and political contexts,